Tracey Galloway may have stepped down from her role as CEO of Community Cooperative in June, but she still says “we” when she talks about the longstanding nonprofit that her father-in-law, the late Sam Galloway Jr., started in 1985. That’s not just out of habit; Tracey is still involved with the organization, working as a volunteer for the Meals on Wheels program and advocating for the group behind the scenes. “I’ll continue to be the loudest voice in the community to support the organization,” she says.
Last year, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity skyrocketed. Tracey and her team doubled the number of mobile food pantry sites and quickly shifted from a walk-up to a drive-thru system to limit physical contact. “With hurricanes and natural disasters, we have playbooks that we go by, we know what we’re doing, where the food comes from, because we’ve been through it before,” she says. “But when COVID came, we just rolled up our sleeves and went with it.”
Community Cooperative was also one of the first local nonprofits to host an in-person fundraiser in May, raising $1.3 million at the Sam Galloway, Jr. & Friends Soup Kitchen Benefit.
Sam initially launched the kitchen as a church mission to help his neighbors in need—a sentiment that Tracey carried with her before taking over the family operation. On her first day at Community Cooperative in 2011, she was greeted by a social worker who she recognized as a former student she mentored while working as vice president of development for Edison State College Foundation (now known as Florida SouthWestern State College). The last time Tracey saw her, she was living out of her car; Tracey had helped her get new clothes and financial aid. “To see her come full circle like that made me know I was doing the right thing,” she says. “Not many people get to work with something they’re really passionate about.”
When the board of directors recruited her, Tracey was tasked with rebuilding the organization that she described as then “not knowing what it wanted to be when it grew up.” First, she shifted the nonprofit to operate more like a small business, paying close attention to the cost and benefit of its existing programs. She closed the soup kitchen’s on-site daycare program and partnered with Childcare of Southwest Florida—which is right down the road—to eliminate redundancy between the nonprofits. More recently, she worked to create an endowment fund to sustain the organization in the future. And, just before the pandemic hit, she launched Community Market within Sam’s Community Café & Kitchen, where locals can choose their own groceries from the shelves instead of receiving a prepackaged kit.
After 10 years, Tracey says it’s the perfect time to pass the torch to her successor Stefanie Ink Edwards. “In nonprofits, I think it’s really important to have fresh leadership,” Tracey says. “I told her when I was leaving, ‘Don’t be afraid to make it yours.’” —Jaynie Bartley